


Read for Me

by orphan_account



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Alternate Universe, Literature, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 06:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12978294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Ha! Ippolit knows what’s up. Stared down that picture good. Prince Myshkin is a pussy. Can’t look at a painting without being afraid of losing his faith? Hahaha! Eruuup… See Morty, if you believe in nothing at all, you can’t feel betrayed in the first place.”This is an AU about a particularly literature obsessed Rick.





	Read for Me

“ _The painting seems precisely to express this notion of a dark, insolent, and senselessly eternal power, to which everything is subjected, and it is conveyed to you involuntarily. The people who surrounded the dead man, none of whom is in the painting, must have felt horrible anguish and confusion on that evening, which at once smashed all their hopes and almost their beliefs_.”

“Ha! Ippolit knows what’s up. Stared down that picture good. Prince Myshkin is a pussy. Can’t look at a painting without being afraid of losing his faith? Hahaha! Eruuup… See Morty, if you believe in nothing at all, you can’t feel betrayed in the first place.”

“Gee, thanks for the lesson Rick, but don’t you think it’s too late to be analysing _The Idiot_? I have school tomorrow and I want to be rested…” Morty gripped the sheets, realising his mistake of bringing up school—

“Morty, you imbecile, aren’t you learning an important lesson right now? What do you need school for when you could read books and learn everything you need to know!” he tapped the cover of _The Idiot_. “The secrets within this book tell you enough about humanity to navigate a fuckin’, I don’t know, stock brokerage or something! The duality of man is incredible!” and as Rick started chattering about Dostoyevsky’s common themes, the Everyman’s Library cover of the book stared broodingly at Morty; he averted his gaze.

“…and don’t get me started about translations. Morty, you’re young, so it’s easier for you to pick up other languages. Start right away. It’s a bit Euro-centric of me, but France and Russia have rich histories of literature. I recommend starting with,” Rick yawned a bone cracking yawn, “those first. Spanish is good too, Mexico’s produced, some fine… writers…” and with that, Rick thumped his body against the carpet and began to snore rhythmically.

Morty sighed in relief. Usually he loved it when his grandpa started going off about whatever literature-flavoured topic he set his strong grip towards, but Morty felt like he would end up regretting it in the morning if he stayed up. Was it not enough for Morty to devote his ears towards Rick in the daytime? Morty remembered a time where Rick would shut himself into his room late at night and the sounds of a scritching pen (Rick couldn’t stand typing) would whisper through the cracks of the door, like any other devoted writer. Rick wouldn’t let Morty read any of his books, so Morty would hug the ground, listening to Rick’s murmurs, (“haha, I should make them use Smirnoff Ice instead of water for the waterboarding scene”) and used those fragmented thoughts to make sense of whatever fantastical setting he would be creating. Rick preferred to write genre fiction, that is, science fiction, despite his love of classic literature, so Morty’s mind would be racing with thots of brightly colored aliens and inhospitable planets.

Morty stopped lurking around Rick’s room when he gifted him a copy of the first book of his series, “Phantasmal Gypsies I”, on his fifteenth birthday. It was a romp starring ghost gypsies scamming their way through the universe, and despite the heavy-handed anarchist message it promoted and the slightly racist Romanian archetypes, Morty was absolutely entranced by Rick’s prose. It played on his teenage sensibilities and he related hard to the third oldest gypsy, Adriana, despite being neither a woman or 400 years old. He grinded his way through the rest of the series in a week, and Rick couldn’t be happier.

No, no, Rick wasn’t happy because his grandson likes his writing, he would never acknowledge how glad it made him to see Morty slide eggs in his mouth passively as he used his knife to weigh down the spine of the book, or the pride he felt when Morty walked into a wall on his way to the toilet. He had massive amounts of fan mail coming in the door each week, so it’s not like he needed approval that his writing was good. He rationalized that he saw Morty as simply a symbol of the people that enjoyed his work, and with a shake of his head he took a break from signing pre-printed thank you notes to take a couple of whiffs of a brain-cell-killing-scented Sharpie.

It also may have been a part of the reason why he started to read Dostoyevsky at night.

It’s really not a good idea to read Dostoyevsky, let alone at night if one wants to live a happy life. It was perfect for Rick’s purposes, then. However, it drove him to drink (more so than usual) and whenever Rick drank, all he wanted to do was lecture on and on like a university professor. Rick knew Morty enjoyed his drunken rants (his heavy gaze, Rick wrestled his (metaphorical) fingers into Morty’s brain, forcing the gears to turn, oh Morty did enjoy it) so he performed at this expense of his writing. At least Morty wasn’t reading in his presence anymore.

Rick was surprised to see Morty didn’t even jump or look skittish to be caught flipping through his second draft manuscript. He finished reading all of Rick’s published works (he managed to finish 50 novels, 249 short stories and a couple of essays in two months?) and needed more to scratch his itch.

“Oh, hi Rick. This is what you’ve been working on recently? It’s incredible!” Morty beamed and the part of Rick that wanted to be sweet and bask in the praise started to win out a little but Rick pushed it down, deciding to take the hardass route.

“When did I give you permission to be in here, Morty? When did I give you permission to go through my desk, Morty? And when, tell me, did I give you permission to read my manuscripts, Morty!?” Rick strode towards Morty and snatched the brick of paper from his hands.

“Ouch, you gave me a paper cut!” Morty cried, “but geez, Rick, I didn’t know you were so secretive about your writing. I mean, you really gave the plot away when you told Dad off for walking too loud upstairs. A planet hopping giant, right? How much of your writing is inspired by real life? Do I inspire you at all, Rick?” Morty looked up at Rick’s face from his bleeding finger and wished he hadn’t. Rick knew that the hot breath that he snorted out was overkill but it was effective in driving Morty out of his room voluntarily.

“Bye Morty, next time you see these words it’ll be in stores! And don’t come in my room anymore or else I’ll, I’ll tickle you to death or something.” Rick cursed at his lame threat, but it was all he could come up with. Shit.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed at least the idea of this. I don't have the patience to flesh this out further.


End file.
